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Making all character models the same size has a lot of benefits when doing poses and animations.
Imagine, for example, a sit-down-on-chair animation. A character with
longer legs has a different sitting pose than one with shorter legs.
Or a character grabbing something. When the characters have different
heights, their hands will be on different positions ...

Yes. Their names, logos, and body designs are all trademarked and cannot be used in any capacity outside those explicitly allowed by trademark law, which almost certainly excluded use in your game. And expect to be completely incapable of acquiring those licenses for reasonable terms, as the licenses are generally very expensive and come with a mile long ...

As some one who ventured a bit into the creation of art, I would really advise you to get in touch with one rather than just "buying" models.
Art from different sources rarely work together (unless of course, they are meant to be) and high quality models alone won't make good graphics, everything needs to be put together with a sense of aesthetics to really ...

Game characters are usually animated using a technique called skeletal animation:
(Image source: Valve Software)
Each 3d model has an invisible bone structure (the red and teal lines in the image above). Each polygon of the model is connected to a bone. When you define a motion sequence, you define it as a sequence of rotations of the bones around their ...

There are more than one ways to do it. You can calculate the absolute orientation or the rotation relative to your avatar, that means your new orientation = avatarOrientation * q. Here is the latter one:
Calculate the rotation axis by taking the cross product of your avatar's unit forward vector and the unit vector from avatar to target, the new forward ...

As Tim Holt said, you need a 3D modeler in order to translate the 2D designs into models. However, if you're willing to try your hand at modeling, the basic process generally goes like this:
Add the image you're working from to the 3D scene so that you can add vertices in front of it. Your modeling program may have a built in method for this, otherwise use ...

TL;DR
In short.. Get Blender! Since you're a beginner it's not worth pouring k's into a software you have no idea how to fully utilize.
Simplicity explained
Well, simplicity is a relative term. For one Blender will be simple, for the other guy Maya. But in the end it depends on how much you use the tool. For example, if you start with Blender, as time ...

In all the games I've worked on, the the Asset Creation Pipeline goes something like this:
the concept artist (for levels/backgrounds/level models) or character artist (for models) will generate sketches for characters/levels/etc. usually multiple options are given to the creative director / lead art to decide which one they like better.
The concept / ...

Cel shading / Toon shading
There might be something more to it, but in general, all of your examples use Cel shading to some extent.
As for your question, whether there are any engines that support this. Well, that should be possible in every engine out there. The ones that aren't hobby projects should actually have such shader available in their standard ...

This is not legal advice because I am not a lawyer, you should consider talking to a real lawyer if you want a proper answer to any law-related topic.
You can't use the assets that ship with Minecraft. You can, however, create your own box-man avatar, and that would probably be a much better idea for a variety of reasons even disregarding the legal or ...

Thermite3D is a voxel-based game engine. It isn't an editor per se. It does, however, have a list of voxel editors on its wiki here: Thermite-Recommended Voxel Editors.
Of those, Sproxel, Voxel, and QBlock are all free. Paint3d and Everygraph (Voxel3d) have trial versions, and one not on the list, Qubicle Constructor, has a crippled trial as well.

On each object you will choose one or more faces that will be removed. In between these faces will be your connection.
Select both objects in object mode. Press Ctrl+J to join the objects into one. Then enter edit mode and change to face manipulation mode.
Remove the faces that will be joined. Select them and press X, remember to delete faces, not ...

Every "UV seam" in your model - that is, every place where the model's faces are continuous while the UV map for the same edge is cut up - is a problem both for the artists and for the hardware.
It makes it harder to texture the model properly. This is especially true when the editing is done on the texture directly, in 2D, not in a 3D painting program. ...

Non commercial
...refers to an activity or entity that does not in some sense involve commerce.
Selling the game involves commerce. Yes, companies are allowed to do that, the details of that aren't on topic here. You may want to look into a paid version of the software, which likely doesn't have the same restrictions. Alternatively, use a different ...

I usually keep my own format internally, and a standardised format externally. The artist only sees the standard format and my engine can only load the optimized internal format. This way you won't have to have model loading code in engine, it can all be done in some nice high level language as a compile step. I usually use a existing build system that ...

Assimp seems to be a good choice and I will be testing this with my next project. It supports a huge array of formats including supporting bones and animations. Not just for model loading, but for changing from format to format, computing vertex and face normals, splitting meshes, and triangulating polygons. It is available under the BSD license.

I created a basic FPS a while ago and got to the point of creating weapon models too. What you will want to do is to create a 'world model' which is the model actually seen on the character in the game, and a 'view model' which is a high detail model that only the player sees.
These Viewmodels should be aligned to the camera during creation, so you know ...

In doing a similar project, I found the SketchUp modeling program to be excellent for copying existing architecture. That's what Google originally meant it for after all.
Here's an account of how I did this:
Outsides
SketchUp's Photo Match feature (tutorial video) is an absolute killer.
It lets you to do this:
Load in a photograph of the real ...

There are two that are really easy to use. First is wavefront (.obj) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavefront_.obj_file and the second is stanford (.ply) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLY_(file_format)
Both store data in normal text/ascii format so you can read the content in a normal text editor which will help you understand the content and how to read it.
...

You can play a lot of tricks with space using portals (the rendering kind) - see Prey, Portal, or Antichamber, for examples. In case you're not familiar with this concept, it's much more than simply teleporting the player around - the renderer actually lets you see through the portal, so it can be completely invisible if that's what you want. Antichamber ...

I think you can do this just by examining the index list.
For each occurrence of each edge in the index list (an edge should never appear more than twice, and exactly twice for a closed model):
If the indices that define the edge appear in the same order more than once, then you've find a winding order disagreement.
0---1
| /|
| / |
|/ |
3---2
This ...

In terms of graphics rendering, one large mesh is faster to draw than several smaller meshes.
If you're talking about something like a corridor, it's probably not going to be that intensive for the GPU if you send it in as a door and a floor and some walls. The smaller meshes also allow you to fiddle with positioning more easily.
If your drawing becomes a ...

Even with a manual process of model generation, there are some tricks you can use to maximize your output. We can follow the same basic rules for real life conservation. The three R's:
Reuse - Take the same model and apply a different texture to it. This can save you the time it takes to generate a model. And will give a convincing "that's a different ...

The solution is not in coding, it's in talent. Bring someone into your team who's a 3d modeller. They will be able to take the 2d concept sketches and turn them into 3d models, just as you (as a programmer) can take someone's idea of an algorithm and turn it into code.

For now it seems that discrete LOD is still preferred, but it remains to be seen if this will change with the next generation of console hardware.
For what it's worth Tom Forsyth has written a lot about continuous LOD, which he calls "progressive meshing". Game Programming Gems 2 purports to have one of these articles, but it appears to be mirrored here.
...

Colleague of mine was looking for a freelance 3d-artists lately, I've got to participate a bit. From what I gathered, there are a lot of nuances strictly defining the final price, but basically, it's all stands on time-per-feature basis. I will briefly describe a process from a layman's point of view, corrections are welcome. Also prices in this post are ...

You can always use oDesk or eLance. The former offers per-hour jobs, the latter offers fixed-price jobs. I've used them before, oDesk for art assets. You just need to be picky and not pay more than X hours a week; but it can backfire.
I recommend eLance, therefore.